


Snowblinded

by cruisedirector



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Hypothermia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-01-07
Updated: 2002-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-29 03:56:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruisedirector/pseuds/cruisedirector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a fragment of story based on a dream I had after reading Laura Williams's "Snowblind." It's pretty necessary to have read that story for this to make sense at all, though it doesn't work with the facts of the story, just the background, and I have no idea what the resolution is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snowblinded

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Snowblind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/315518) by [lauawill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lauawill/pseuds/lauawill). 



After almost an hour of walking, he still wasn't sure how he'd gotten there, but he knew for certain where he was. He couldn't have remembered the ship in such detail even in deep meditation: the tiny wires cross-connecting the EPS relays at the back of the engineering panels, the faint discoloration of the ceiling over the stovetop in the mess, the barely discernible pilling of the rug along the edges of the chairs on the bridge. Everything looked sharper and clearer than usual--the people too. He'd never noticed before how Ayala chewed the inside of his cheek while concentrating on a security grid, nor how Tom Paris jiggled his ankle during strenuous flight simulations. He instinctively knew better to touch any of the crew--that if he reached out, his hand would move through them, into the whiteness, and he would find himself back where he had started.

The bridge was quiet and tense. They were all looking for him, going over maps and energy readings, running anomalous results by Harry Kim. He assumed that the captain must be in her ready room, and that in his present immaterial state he could not open the door.

He rode the lifts when others entered them, stopping in all the places he would check during an impromptu inspection--the holodeck, the gym, the labs, the hydroponics bay, engineering. Torres was swearing at the scanners, which were not giving the bridge as much resolution as she thought they should be.

"B'Elanna," he said.

She didn't turn, didn't shiver, didn't acknowledge any sense of his presence.

It was the same all over the ship. Kes moved back and forth past him in sickbay without a glance in his direction, not a blink nor a frown. Tuvok stood at attention at his console, unruffled even when Chakotay breathed down his neck to see what the Vulcan was looking at. Chakotay could not feel the warmth from the closeness. He lifted his fingers in the semblance of a Vulcan nerve pinch, but stopped just before his hand would have made contact with Tuvok's shoulder; he was getting silly in this state, he needed rest.

He entered the lift with Lieutenant Hargrove and wandered in the direction of crew quarters, not stopping to think until he got there that he was not going to be able to open his own door. Which was locked. A security field was in place, and the comm system had an alert flashing no interruptions.

The door opened anyway.

He made his way slowly into the outer room. Someone had cleaned off his table-- the dishes which he had left in his haste were no longer strewn among his padds and utensils. The air smelled fresh. The lights were dim, but not entirely darkened; he could see the medicine wheel on his wall, a few of his sculptures.

And someone in his chair, wrapped in his blanket.

His first thought, irrationally, was of his mother, guarding over his possessions in his absence. But this was Voyager; his mother was thousands upon thousands of light years away. The figure in the chair was slight, hidden almost entirely in the blanket, fingers clutching the edges at the neck. A few wisps of golden hair gleamed past the fold which covered her head.

He spoke, shakily. "Captain."

Of course, she couldn't hear him. And he was probably hallucinating her here in his quarters which had admitted him despite the lock. He was probably hallucinating the ship as well.

He was alone on an unknown world and he was going to die there.

Icy wind tore through the room, blinding him to everything but himself and the woman curled in his chair. Slowly, she lifted her head to stare directly at him.

"Chakotay?" she whispered, her mouth still hidden by the blanket wrapped like a veil around her face.

"Yes."

Her hands dropped the edges of the blanket, letting it fall from her face and neck, reaching towards him. He took one step forward and was beside her instantly, the room still invisible beyond the outline of the chair. Pulling her legs into a ball, she shifted to make room for him to sit next to her, their bodies touching, her skin warm and fragrant as she caught his face between her palms. He sat utterly still, afraid to move, afraid that if he let the contact continue, she would dissolve like the ship around them.

In a distinct quiet voice she said, "I'm dreaming. Or else I'm going insane." And she burst into tears, pressing her face alongside his, her lips trembling against his jaw.

"You're not going insane. It's me." Once he had spoken, he could move again, and he wrapped his arms around her under the blanket, shivering.

"The Bothans..." she began.

"It's me," he said again. "I don't know how. I walked all over the ship and couldn't talk to anybody. I can't see anything else in this room."

She lifted her head, her fingers still wrapped around his cheeks. "Neither can I." Before he could reply, she pulled his face down and kissed him.

Time stopped. He was everywhere and nowhere with her, under the blanket which now nearly covered them both, and that was all. Then he could feel the wind behind him, riffling her hair, biting through the blanket, he could smell her hair and the blanket and his own plants in the wind. He knew that there was not much time for him to tell her how to find him.

"I need to tell you..." he began. And was distracted by what else he needed to tell her, in case she did not find him. He hadn't said it in his final messages, that would have made it too real.

She looked away from him, at the blankness which was the room. "Please, if you can hear me where you are--forgive me..."

"There's nothing to forgive." Her fingers were turning to ice against his cheeks. He could no longer see distinctly, not the pattern on the blanket nor the tears on her face. "Kathryn..."

He felt her look around, knew that she was seeing his quarters again, just as he was seeing where he was, where he was returning. "Cold," he tried to say to her. She cried out, her hands slipping from his face, and she was gone. Or he was.


End file.
